


all dishevelled wandering stars

by BucketofWater



Category: Hades (Video Game 2018)
Genre: Ares Is The Equivalent Of Your Edgy Older Cousin, Bastardisation of Greek Myth AND Ancient History, Character Study, Debatably Slow Burn, First Kiss, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Gratuitous Character Study Pretending To Be A Fic, M/M, Mutual Pining, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Thanatos is a Mommas Boy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 17:21:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29067966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BucketofWater/pseuds/BucketofWater
Summary: “Is a love unrequited not the purest form in the world?” Ares asked, pointedly. “To love unbidden, knowing that you will receive nothing in return. To love purely because there is no other option, unsullied by discontent and ulterior forces. Tell me, Thanatos, is that not good?"Or, Thanatos is in love, and does not know how to say it. Zagreus is too busy trying to undermine his father to stop and listen.
Relationships: Ares & Thanatos (Hades Video Game), Thanatos/Zagreus (Hades Video Game)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 133





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> hey!!
> 
> i don't know if anyone even reads Hades fics, so howdy if you're out there? 
> 
> a few of the tags and the explicit rating don't really apply until later chapters. a great majority of this thing is already written, which is a first for me! this fic includes a lot of references to ancient history and mythology, some of which may not be 100% accurate but y'know, I'm here for fun so just take it with a grain of salt <3
> 
> I also haven't finished the game beyond a few successful escape attempts so, sorry if any of this doesn't mesh with later-game canon. 
> 
> title is taken from a poem by my lad W.B Yeats.
> 
> comments and kudos are super appreciated

Zagreus died for the first time when Thanatos was only a child.

Or rather, he was young, and wearing the form of a child. The Gods were ageless beings that held little regard for the different shapes of the mortals. The only discernible difference was that sometimes Persephone was sad when a smaller, slighter Shade would clamber out of the Styx. She would hold their tendril thin fingers, translucent and cloyed with crimson blood. 

She would weep and Hades would rage, so Thanatos would make himself scarce until Nyx beckoned him home. 

Thanatos was slight then, arms not yet flushed with muscles and legs still aching after his training sessions held in the desolate fields that bordered Tartarus. Knobbly knees peaked out from the trim of his chiton. His knuckles were still too-large and cruel looking for the spindly length of his hands. 

_ Gawky _ , Hades had once said of him with some distaste.  _ Hardly suitable for his purpose. _

“His role is one of eloquence,” Nyx had intervened, voice as cold and vacuous as the nebulous black stars of her realm, “he does not need to be a brute.”

Death didn’t seem very eloquent to him, the entire affair hummed unpleasantly of some undignified torture. The ultimate form of weakness, even a timid death - _especially_ a timid death. Even the Shades of those who died in their beds, bid away by their families, cursed and wept and raged when they washed up in Hades. 

Hypnos had gotten the better deal, Thanatos though. 

Still, Thanatos did not feel the same drear pull of exhaustion that always haunted his twin. He did not feel the consuming, bone-crushing weight of having to stay awake beneath that colossal pain. Hypnos had once said it was a Herculean effort, and Thanatos had flinched and fretted under fear that Hades had heard them say such things. 

So Thanatos did not feel the exhaustion, and in turn, Hypnos did not feel the fading of life.

It began gingerly, an easy to ignore gnawing against his skin, almost as if some bug had decided to nip at him. The longer he ignored the sensation - not even scratching had gotten rid of it - it would worsen, burrowing into his flesh.

“They need you,” Nyx had told him. “They are fading, and they are calling for you.”

He did not need to ask  _ who _ , somehow, despite the agony radiating down to his core, he knew exactly the soul that was begging for him.

Each was unusually distinct; the sweet tang of figs bursting over his tongue and the scent of sandalwood for a girl in Euboea, the heat of a forge against his skin and the burn of coals against his fingertips for an old man in Crete. He did not need to know them in life to find them in death.

Thanatos was born to cater to those who died a gentle death. The carnage was left to his sisters - undiscussed, not acknowledged, barred from their House - but he did not expect for the calls to  _ hurt _ . The death of a soul would flare in him, aching in his chest and rasping against his ribs until he felt like his body would crumble beneath the pressure. Then, with a flash that left something like sulphur coating his tongue, the feeling would vanish. There was no soreness, no profound ache of bruised ribs or ruptured organs. The turmoil would simply be gone as if it had never been there at all.

At least, until the next soul began to perish. 

Then it just started all over again. 

The day that Lady Persephone went into labour found Thanatos fresh out of training. Much of the House staff had been beckoned to her chambers, save for Achilles who had been alongside Thanatos and Hypnos running drills in the Courtyard. His Goddess-mother Nyx was nowhere to be found, and the hound Cerberus was busying himself pacing the marble halls with his maw curled back into a snarl. His hackles were raised, thick tufts of red fur riding his back like plumes.

“I think we best stay out of their way for now, lads,” Achilles had warned, taking their wooden training swords to return them to the armoury. 

Thanatos was fine with that. He was thoroughly exhausted after their session, a bone-deep tiredness that caused his shoulders to droop and his eyes to occasionally dip shut for longer than he would like. It did not help that there was allegedly some ruinous blizzard wreaking havoc up on the surface, and many mortals were finding themselves slipping into a cold death. 

Apparently freezing to death was considered a gentle way to go, and so Thanatos was saddled with the weight of their passing. It would be better, Nyx had said, when he was fully trained and able to go relieve them from the mortal coil himself. It would make the pain go away sooner. 

He did not ask whose pain she meant. 

Hypnos had curled a hand into the crook of his elbow, eagerly tugging him towards the entrance to the parlour in Nyx's chambers. He was talking, not that Thanatos was taking in anything that was spilling out in that reedy voice of his. 

The pain hit just as Hypnos had plied him with a slanted smirk, a wry comment of, “you know, since mother is not here we could eat as many pom-” then that expression was dashed as Thanatos crumpled, hand seizing the front of his own chiton desperately, his ribs felt as if they were being  _ crushed _ .

“Are you alright?” Hypnos asked, voice wrung high with childish panic. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

With his free hand Thanatos reached out, wrapping his fingers around Hypnos’ thin wrist and squeezing until he felt the creak of delicate bones. 

_He couldn’t breathe._ Beneath the fine skin of his temple his pulse was hammering like a war drum; he could not even feel the flesh of his brother beneath his hand, everything was  _ numb. _ He was supposed to be a God but he was dying - there was no other explanation for this pain. 

He grit his teeth, the raw bite of copper filling his mouth even as his head pulsed with some distant agony. A rich scent like roasted honey flared in his nose, even as the tart taste of ambrosia curdled in his throat. Something sharper than even the spear-tip of Achilles was drawing over his bones, flaying him from the inside, he was  _ dying, he was- _

And then it was gone, just as quick as it had come. 

Thanatos looked up into the terrified face of his brother, his chest heaving around his own gulping breaths. 

Then, from within the House, there was a scream. 

It could only have been Persephone, a shriek like pure despair, the cloy of the Shades when the visage of a loved one washed up along the Styx. Outside in the hall, Cerberus howled. 

Persephone’s child had died, Thanatos realised. A God had just died in the House of Hades and he had felt it. 

\---

Hypnos had held him as he sobbed, pressing his face into the rich, crimson fabric of his brother’s chlamys. He had never shown such weakness before, had never allowed his emotions to consume him so thoroughly as to break. But his body felt wreaked after that death, even now his fingers were numb and clumsy as he clutched at Hypnos with some feral desperation.

Nyx found him like that, the pair of them pulled up onto one of the chaise lounges. 

“Oh my child,” she cooed, and something about the tenderness of her voice only wounded him further, beckoning forward a fresh wave of tears to dash his face. “I had worried that you would feel the demise of greater souls in such a fashion. I regret that my prediction was right.”

“It died,” Thanatos bit out. Beside him he felt Hypnos flinch, watched his head pivot nervously between himself and their mother. 

“He did,” Nyx replied.

“But he was a God!” Hypnos interjected, voice wrung with nerves. 

“Even those descended from the Gods can die, child,” Nyx said. Her voice was not soothing, a note of something trembled on the outside like the threat of some natural disaster. The dark skin around her eye was creased with worry. 

There was a tension between them all now, heady enough to make his head buzz. The beat of his heart was deafening, and idly he wondered if everyone else could hear it. The House was silent.

“Where is Cerberus?” He found himself asking. 

“Likely tormenting the dead,” Nyx said, “leave him to his grief. For all that we pass our days surrounded by the departed I do not think that any anticipated this outcome. I would advise you to avoid Lord Hades especially until he is tempered.”

“What about the Lady?” Hypnos asked, softly. 

Nyx looked away sharply, the gold of her eyes slanted and troubled, even the brand of starlight that often touched them was absent, leaving her dreadfully hollow. Where they were tucked up in her skirts her hands trembled. 

“Do not trouble her, would you? She has had her fill of death,” Nyx said finally.

“Oh,” Thanatos replied, looking down at where his fingers interlocked in his lap, squeezing until even the dark skin of his knuckles was pale. Lady Persephone had always been kind to him, enticing him and Hypnos (and on occasion even Achilles) into games that she had played in her youth on the surface. Sometimes Achilles even knew them himself, and they would spend entire training sessions laughing in the barren courtyards with their desolate flower-beds and iron-wrought fixtures. 

She was tired of death, Thanatos considered, perhaps he could remind her of their time- then the thought struck him, brutal as a flash of a palm against his cheek. 

He  _ was _ death.

“ _ Oh _ ,” he said again, and they spoke no more of it.

\---

Persephone was gone. 

On the surface it would take mortals days to walk again after the birth of a child - if they ever did walk again. But Persephone was imbued with the blood of their kin, and she was a hardy Goddess. As soon as she could fling back the linens of her maternity bed she had taken flight out of their halls. 

Cerberus had howled; had gnashed at Shades and had raked his claws over marble fixtures. Nyx had brought her children to her chambers, had swaddled them up into her arms that were cold like the evening sky and she had sobbed with tears that glimmered like constellations on her cheeks. Dusa, the little Gorgon, had even made a pleasant little shrine out of a portrait of Persephone in the lounge.

Hades had torn it down, had crushed the painting beneath his heel and screamed. 

Their Lord was beyond confrontation, beyond reason and mad with his grief. To have lost both a son and a wife in such a short notice, Thanatos could not imagine the pain that troubled him now. But that agony was turned to violence, and the temper of the man was fearsome beyond words.

“I want to go,” Thanatos whispered, cradled against his mother’s chest. Opposite him, in the curve of her arm, Hypnos lay asleep, white lashes brushing his cheeks. They were much too big to be held by her now, long limbs folded up unnaturally so that she could cradle them. She held them regardless. “To begin my duty.”

“Do you consider yourself ready to undertake such tasks?” Nyx asked him. Her voice was still damp.

“I do,” he said.

“And you can tell me honestly that you believe this to be fact? You can tell me that you are not running away?” she asked.

Thanatos paused to consider, heart beating in his throat. There was always an inkling in the back of his mind that his mother knew when he was lying. If it was not an ability universal to all mothers then at the very least he knew that his own Goddess-mother would know. 

She accepted his silence as answer enough.

“I will permit you to leave, if you wish to be away from this chaos,” she smiled, gently petting the long fall of his hair. “There is no teaching here that we can offer you further, the rest of your purpose is to be learned up above, where we cannot follow. Your brother, Charon, knows some of your duty, and he will be able to aid you. I know you will thrive.”

“How?” he whispered. Now that the opportunity was available he felt a tremendous fear of actually leaving.

“Because you are my son,” she whispered, pressing the slant of her mouth against his temple.

\---

One thing they did not tell him about the surface was just how warm it was.

The sun was relentless, a heavy plume of thick haze that slogged his movements and dampened his skin with beads of sweat. Apollo's light was by which all natural things grew and flourished in the world, and as much as Thanatos watched plants bloom and crops ripen beneath that stifling heat, he too felt himself change.

His muscles filled out, the pallid hue of his flesh warmed into the colour of almonds. He may have grown taller. There was no time to stop and consider. 

Work in the world was demanding, and exhausting. Thanatos found himself passing mortal months without any other consideration. The moment he had relieved a soul from the commitment of life he would find another beckoning him to do the same.

Often his work was thankless. He did not begrudge his fabled sisters their task of condemning the tortured dead, but he did believe that their task received more gratitude. It was more noble to be felled in battle than to die curled up in your sickbed.

The more souls he claimed, discovering just how pitiful the mortals were, the more he came to feel as a monster.

\---

The House of Hades was silent when he returned. 

Ready as he was to broach the outside world and to deliver souls to his Lord Hades, Thanatos still longed for his family, and some secret part of him begrudged his brother for being able to stay always with their mother. 

Hunched distortions of Shades flickered in his peripheral as he made his way into the main hall. The creatures were stooped in conversation, almost incomprehensible unless he squinted at them. Only then, when too much attention was paid, could you begin to divulge the intricate details of their expressions, the shape of their face. Thanatos did not care to look. He did not want to recognise any of the dead. 

_ That _ had never been a problem before.

Hypnos was the first real sight he savoured. His younger brother - he was the eldest of only a few minutes, a few minutes that he would lord indefinitely over his sibling - was bowed over an open sheath of parchment, the thick white plume of a quill bobbing in his hand. Thick curls veiled his expression, tumbling over his forehead and Thanatos swallowed down on a tender smile; it had grown in his absence. 

There was no new height to him, perhaps his jaw was a little sharper at the edges, though. Still pudgy - they were still technically children, even amongst Gods. 

Thanatos approached silently, as death often did. He leered down at the scratch of black ink across the parchment and frowned. 

“Your handwriting is atrocious,” he scolded. 

Hypnos flinched, whirling around to stare up at him with eyes rounded in surprise. That shocked expression was easily melded into glee, a spark of excitement touching his mouth as he grinned. 

“You’re back!” he crowed, voice still pitched and reedy. Not much had changed, then. “You’ve missed so much!”

“Obviously not your education,” Thanatos pressed, gesturing towards the nigh-incomprehensible scrawling. “I know mother’s hand to be so dignified, and here I can hardly make out any of your letters.”

“Mother has been too busy to teach me,” Hypnos replied, almost guiltily. He tucked his head downwards, averting his gaze. “I have been learning from Achilles, when he is able. Or Orpheus, if he is of a mood.”

_ So never then, _ Thanatos thought. Achilles had no penchant for writing, patience drawing thin as the courtyard beckoned his attention. The most he could teach them outside of combat without growing restless was a few simple tunes on the lyre. And Orpheus? That man was too consumed by grief to be of any service.

Much like their Lord Hades. 

“What has mother so occupied?” Thanatos pressed.

“Well,” Hypnos began, thinning his mouth into a hard line. His gaze flickered about them anxiously, wringing his fingers together until the corpse-pale skin turned blue. “After you left - almost immediately after you left, there was this whole ordeal. I mean, there was  _ yelling _ and it woke me up in the middle of my nap, and I couldn’t get back to sleep. So I went looking and there was Hades, and he was so mad even Cerberus was cowering and I-”

“Hypnos,” Thanatos sighed.

“Hades had a baby,” Hypnos said, snapping his mouth closed as soon as the words spilled out. 

Thanatos blinked, brain sluggishly picking over the information, attempting to form the notion into something that made any sort of sense. “ _ What?” _ he snapped. 

“Well, he was holding one,” Hypnos hurried to clarify. “I thought that well, maybe, it was like Zeus-”

With a hard noise Thanatos waved his hand, bidding his brother silent. They all knew the story of Athena’s birth; springing full formed from her God-father. It was not a dignified tale, and not one that bore being applied to their Lord Hades. But the theory was not too far fetched, and Thanatos found himself considering it.

“He asked Mother to claim it as her own,” Hypnos pressed, seriously. “Only I know it to be otherwise. I think Charon was informed, to avoid confusion. And now there is you.”

“Only us,” Thanatos repeated. 

“I do not think she wanted us to think less of her. To believe that she was conspiring with Hades to bear his child while Lady Persephone was by his side, doing the same,” Hypnos said.

Nothing would make Thanatos think less of his mother, but he replied softly regardless, “I am thankful that she told you.”

“So am I,” Hypnos laughed, thin and wheezing. “I don’t want any more siblings.”

“I want to see her,” Thanatos said finally, squeezing awkwardly at Hypnos’ shoulder, cushioned by the velvet of his cloak. 

Her chambers were deeper in the House, easiest to access after cutting across the open courtyard following a marble hallway to a collection of deep obsidian doors. His own rooms were in this section of the house, untouched since he left in the middle of the night like some cowering vagabond. 

Perhaps this new child would smooth over his fumbling return. The new child may have balmed the rage. Maybe it would stop Hades from taking his head. 

He pressed into his mother’s rooms without announcing himself, palm flat against the cool material of the door. Inside the chamber was subdued, heavy velvet curtains drawing across the walls, weaving up and across the poles of a canopy bed. There was a sitting area, heavy furniture nestled amongst the wooden frame of a bookshelf. It was an ancient thing, wood was a rarity, for they had nothing natural, and it bore heavy scratches and blemishes of use. 

“Thanatos.”

Where she was reclined in the plush cushions of her chair, his mother held out a hand to him, palm upturned. Her hair was wild about her face, nebulous black laced with thickets of jewelled adornments, glimmering gems. A collection of blankets were swaddled in her other arm, tucked up against her chest. 

“You look so well,” she said, lips curving around a smile that could only be seen as  _ proud _ . 

“I, erm-” Thanatos hesitated. Outside of the door he was a man, the embodiment of Death, a God who claimed souls. Within this room he was a child once more, arms still gangly, hair still erratic. A boy who had not even knocked. “I heard from Hypnos, about, well-”

“Ah,” she replied, softly. “How much did he share?”

“That there is a new God among us,” Thanatos said. “That I have no new familial obligations.”

“Close the door,” she commanded, and Thanatos was helpless but to oblige. 

He shut the door behind him, making his way to one of the armchairs and perching awkwardly on the end. From this new vantage he could make out more details; a chubby arm pale like the ash of some fire pit, ghastly as chalk dust. Tufts of unruly black hair crowned some indistinguishable face. It was Hades’ hair, composed of brimstone and the darkness of congealed blood. But to an unfamiliar eye it could be mistaken for the shade of his mother’s. 

“Is it true?” Thanatos asked.  _ That this child was born of Hades like the Goddess Athena of her own father? _

“We had not thought it possible,” Nyx sighed, shoulder dipping limply beneath the weight of it. For a brief moment she seemed incomprehensibly exhausted, the drear expression distorting her face. Then it was gone, replaced with her same cool countenance. 

“Do you think the Lady Persephone would return, knowing that they could still have a child together?” Thanatos asked, hopefully. 

“I do not think she would return to this place once more,” Nyx replied, after a moment of hesitation. “I do not- no.” She swallowed, levelling him with a severe look. “She never belonged among us, and the fate of their child was simply the event that brought her to finally understand that fact.”

“I’ll miss her,” Thanatos murmured. 

“I know,” Nyx whispered. 

Although so quiet, the words were weighty between them, consuming the silence of the room. Thanatos could taste their bitterness in the air. Then, quite suddenly, a churning gurgle interrupted his forlorn thoughts. 

Nyx adjusted the bundle in her arms, propping up the infant so that Thanatos was met quite abruptly by a pair of eyes peering out from a swaddle of blankets. The right eye was dark, a flash of crimson bisecting the small face like a scar. The other was a tepid, lush green (the colour almost unseen within the halls of the dead outside of foreign dyes.)

“His name is Zagreus,” Nyx introduced. “And as far as you are concerned, he is your kin.”

Thanatos suppressed a grimace. He had never encountered a child. Youth had always been a title reserved for him and his brother alone, always the smallest bodies, always the most catered to. The pair were scarcely brushing a mortal decade. 

But now Hades had a Prince. 

“It is an honour to meet you,” Thanatos said, falteringly. 

The child - Zagreus - cooed in response, flailing in the swath of blankets. A fat leg found some gap at the base of the hold, flinging out and hitting his mother with a  _ thunk _ against her sternum.

Thanatos stared. For the first time in his existence he did not care that he was undignified, feeling his mouth soften as it hung open, ignoring the crease of his forehead as his eyes widened in surprise.

“Is-” he stammered, pointing awkwardly at where a tendril of flame crackled along the underside of the infant’s foot. “Is that entirely normal?”

“No, Thanatos,” Nyx said, mouth curved with wry bemusement. “It is not normal for the foot of a child to be aflame.”

She plucked up that foot in her hand, fingers wrapping around the delicate limb. It fit snugly in the palm of her hand, impossibly tiny. He could hear the sizzle-hiss of the heat against her flesh, saw the way the magma - like Asphodel incarnate, he realised - flared with the heat of a forge. Just as quickly as she had placed it, Nyx drew her hand away with a frown. 

“In his circumstances, however, I find that it is inherent and healthy,” she confided. “It does make drawing his baths difficult work; give me endless millennia and I would never find a temperature that he does not boil.” 

As if to underscore her point, Zagreus fussed incoherently in her arms. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all for your comments and kudos, you're all lovely <3

Thanatos met Ares on a summer's day on the outskirts of Knossos. 

Sunlight baked the lands, a scorching white heat that settled in a haze like a shroud over the porcelain white earth. Dust like chalk kicked up into thick plumes of cream beneath the heel of plough animals, heavy oxen with long horns, capped in copper to stop any unfortunate goring. Thanatos appreciated the gesture; he was not inclined to run into any of his sisters. 

The city itself was some radiant beacon on the horizon, impressionable where it sat perched on the precipice of some hill, large white walls of limestone glimmering beneath the yellow sun. Collections of farmsteads rose about the structure, marked uniformly with brown fences that were bound with weather-beaten twine. Crops were beginning to crawl up through packed earth, scarce flecks of green distorting the mirage of earth and dirt. 

Something was  _ wrong _ . 

An unpleasant sensation had burrowed into the base of his neck, lodging itself in the tender flesh between the notches of his spine. The overwhelming feeling of being watched drew across his skin - which was absurd. He was entirely unremarkable.

Thanatos took great precaution to keep himself unnoticeable. His face was always obscured by the dark linen of his hood, taking care to ensure that the golden trim was tucked in at the hem. The sheer length of his hair was pulled up into a knot at the base of his skull. To any outside eye he was just another pilgrim farm boy. 

Other than the distant farmer and his oxen a few fields over, the lands were barren. An idle hum rose up out of the city, voices bloated on the hot air, but it was unlikely that any marksman up on those high walls could distinguish him from such a distance. 

Still, Thanatos pressed onwards, following the eager tugging in his gut. There was the scent of lilac in his nose and the taste of cucumbers on his tongue. The soul calling to him was delicate, just a phantom press of suffering under those pleasant sensations. 

Rationally he knew that he could appear himself into the farmhouse that lingered up ahead, but part of him enjoyed the walk. There was a vast and unfathomable world up above the Halls of Hades, and it was soothing for his mind to stop sometimes and to take in the vast blueness of the sky. He had not seen such a colour outside of gemstones and tapestries before he clambered up out of the earth. 

Sweat prickled against his skin, settling in a heavy sheen.

Before him sat a humble farmhouse, a neat garden bracketed in to its side. 

The house was a humble one, made up of a white clay pasted over the outline of wooden beams, packed together with heavy quarried bricks. Remnants of paint clung to the exterior, peeling up and bleached blindingly white beneath the cruel sun. There were no windows, the walls all flat expanses that housed the crawling sprawl of wilted ivy.

Before him the door was ajar, the rich curl of herbs clinging to the air from where they were drying in a rack affixed to the ceiling beam. The scent had a medicinal quality to it. He knew that many of them could be crushed up in a mortar alongside some berries and flowers to make decent painkillers and remedies. Thanatos even knew some of the recipes well, could recite them from memory, were it necessary. Many of his days were spent in sickbays, in impromptu field-hospitals on the outskirts of warzones, thick with the scent of blood and carnage and fear and then, always, lilac and aloe vera.

Thanatos appeared as just another body in amongst those frantic scenes, so it was not unusual for an overworked surgeon to shove some ingredients into the most convenient hands and instruct that they set to work. He picked it up, grew beyond having to question just which herbs he should powder, knew the measurements and when to stop grinding entirely when the fragrance was ripe.

It made his job feel more like a transaction; he could help save one life before he would take another. 

The interior of the home was dim, dark snatches of shadows and the faint outlines of old wooden furniture. A heavy rug lay across the dusty floor of the entryway, impressions of mud and straw ground down into the fibres. The only sunlight fell in from the open doorway, golden and speckled with motes of dust and animal fur. His back was to the outside world, his hooded shadow was cast stark and black down on the ground before him.

“If-” A voice croaked out, low and rough, and Thanatos snapped his head up in the direction of the only other doorway. It was consumed by shadows, and he stepped hesitantly towards it. A throat was roughly cleared, gritty and thick, and the voice pressed on. “If you have come for Milos he has gone to market for the day.” 

Thanatos ducked into the room, scarcely half the size of the modest one he had come from. A wooden pallet bed pressed up against two of the walls, wedged between them. Lengths of blankets and rolls of fabric were strewn across the surface, the stench of old straw and the damp, heady miasma of  _ sickness _ curled in the air. The sickly shroud of sweat and fluid and human suffering. A figure was propped up against a linen sack, lithe and listless as they looked up at him.

Dark skin stretched over prominent bones, the hue dull and brassy. Thick tangles of black hair hung over one shoulder, the sharp jut of a collarbone appearing beyond the too-large tunic. Eyes met his own, irises nut brown, speckled with the soft hues of burned honey. The taste of cucumber on his tongue intensified, crawled up into his nose until he could smell the freshness of it. 

“Oh,” The figure stared up at him, reclined back against their bed. 

“You’re in pain,” he said, softly. 

She was young, beneath the grime and the disease. The skin around her eyes was unblemished, the only marking on her skin was the dark impression of nearly-faded freckles. Her full lips twitched at their corners, the skin cracked and breaking into red welts. Heavy brows drew down into a scowl that creased her eyes. 

Thanatos’ heart gave a pathetic little lurch. It was a terrible deed, one he regretted in that moment, one he would always come to regret. But then the pain flared in his bones, lancing through his chest, and the girl winced and raised a skeletal hand to press against her side. 

She was a Shade already. 

“I can take you now.” Thanatos watched as her expression twisted -not with fear, of which he was so dreadfully accustomed- but with abstract disappointment. 

“I still haven’t sowed for harvest,” she said 

_ You never will _ . There was no reassurance he could offer to her, no tithe with which he could bribe her soul onwards. Nothing natural grew in the stone abode of Hades. This farmgirl would never see anything crafted by her own hand come to fruition and prosper. Would never witness it wither and fade. 

“Summer is drawing late, I think your crop would best wait until next season,” he said.

“It is dreadfully unfair, is it not?” she asked. Thanatos did not distinctly get the impression that she was speaking to him, her head was titled back to stare up at the rafters, eyes hidden behind dark lashes. 

“Only if you wish to consider the afterlife a punishment, rather than an extension.” Thanatos pressed closer, loomed over her outstretched form. The eager pulse of her fading soul flared, writhing beneath the skin of his palm, calling to be released. “It can be quite eventful. There are kitchens to be worked in, endless bounties of crafts. Go out and dedicate your afterlife to finding some lyre and learn to play.”

The girl cringed, bearing blackened teeth. “Not any of _that_. Gods know I am overdue a rest. It is only that, that I am here, speaking with you, and the man who passed to me this affliction has fully recovered! That dim-witted, bumbling fool- that _poet-”_ she spat the word as a slur; Thanatos knew it to be one, amongst the common folk and the elite alike. There was no greater shame in civilised society than to pursue the arts of the stage.

“I can only offer so many apologies,” Thanatos replied. 

“Save them,” she hissed. “Could you not go find him and condemn him also, for all the trouble he has caused?” 

Thanatos blanched, staring down at the fury in her tightly coiled form, the way her hands bunched into fists by her sides. Her jaw trembled around the grit of her snarling mouth. For a moment he was inclined to listen, to avenge this young girl who was being taken by disease before she had even left her mark on the world. It was  _ unfair- _

But he could not. Even if he wished to (which, after deliberation, he resolutely did not want to get into  _ that _ ) he did not have the capacity to condemn another to death, outside of the most literal sense of knocking a mortal over the head. Thanatos could only cut away at the souls that were only clinging to mortality by single threads. 

He had infinite power over the dead. His proficiency for the living was fleeting. 

“I will see what I can do,” he said, if only to watch her mouth curve into a weak smile. 

“I would offer you some tribute in thanks, but as you can see, I have nothing,” she replied.

“Just do not make a fuss,” he said. 

Thanatos could not quite tell if she was honouring his request, or if she was so crippled by bone-deep exhaustion that she could not, but she did not muster any fight as she passed. His palm flattened against her shoulder, flush against the sweat and grime of her skin. A resounding flash of white ran across his vision, like the first stroke of lightning, and then she was gone, cast down into the Styx, and he was left staring at her corpse. 

He left her as she had died. It was not his place to mourn all of the dead.

Thanatos stepped out into the day, blinking white sunlight from his eyes. The world was still quiet. In the distance the vague impression of the farmer and his oxen had crossed over to a new row in their tilling. Thanatos turned to leave, to walk down the length of the path and bask while his body was blissfully empty; no clamouring souls bidding for his attention, only his own thoughts and the lush feeling of being entirely himself.

And the distinct feeling of being watched. The nausea of it had returned again, perhaps it had never truly gone.

A figure was propped up against a fence post at the bottom of the dirt path. Squinting as he was, Thanatos struggled to gleam many features. There was close cropped grey hair, falling down across one half of a well sculpted face, features stern and drawn down into a frown. From such a distance his eyes were only a flash of crimson, inset into a dark head. However, the figure was imposing, sculpted muscles like some athlete; more than a Greek soldier certainly, the mottling of scars - flashes of tawny skin healed over - could not have been earned on a simple campaign. He looked like a Laconian warrior. 

Thanatos noted the rich golden hew of his breastplate, reflecting like starlight as the sun refracted off of the surface. Heavy pauldrons were held so easily on proud shoulders. 

Thanatos had never seen such a man before and he was not entirely sure he wished to be acquainted. 

He ducked his head, allowing the shadow of his hood to fall across his face, and continued walking. 

“Is that truly any reception for a God of Olympus?” The Laconian called, voice a thundering baritone, barked out like a command. Thanatos paused, mid-step, mind churning over the words.  _ Too many words _ , was his first thought,  _ so probably not Spartan _ . And then, the mechanism of his mind finally processing what was said, his gut lurched with fear. 

_ God of Olympus _

Thanatos snapped his head back to take in the figure, picking out the minute details. A black wreath perched elegantly over that white hair. White. Not grey, as he had imagined, but genuinely white, like the soft fall of snow, like the catastrophic grasp of winter, of bodies freezing in storms and of cities starving in blizzards. White like bone breaking wetly through torn skin. 

Silver glimmered at his waist as he shifted, the polished blade of a sword twinkling up at him. 

The nerves that twisted in his gut ceased, pulling up into his throat to suffocate him with abstract fear. 

There was only one God who could fit such a description. 

“Lord Ares,” he breathed, choked out the words like a stammering child.

He fumbled, collecting himself enough to bow. His mind was a tumultuous mess as he tried to process the greeting, did he bow just as he did for Lord Hades? Was he to bow even lower, to show his reverence? Was he to not bow at all, to display that he only respected the domain and command of his own Lord-God? 

Fisting his hands at his sides, he settled instead for a low bow, just scarcely above how low he would prostrate himself for Hades. 

“ _ Lord-God _ Ares,” he amended, with a wince.

His heart rate spiked against his throat, a deafening mantra drumming against the tender underside of his jaw. He flinched at the first sound out of the man, a deep rumbling laughter, an echoing kind that was drawn up out of his chest. 

“Be easy, child, I have no intentions of harming you.”

The tone was leisurely, a long drawing baritone, octave low. Something about the words was soft, and Thanatos looked up to find Ares sporting a smile, a flash of white teeth, all perfectly straight. 

“I apologise,” Thanatos bit out. Fear was still writhing in his head, pounding errantly against his skull to drum up the nerves in his mind, to remind him of the danger in this predicament. The aftertaste of that shock settled heavily over his tongue, coating it like soot. 

“What for?” Ares balked, waving a large hand -  _ huge _ , actually, each digit of those thick fingers looked broader than Thanatos’ wrist - dismissively in his direction. 

He had a murderer’s hands, Thanatos mused, a big killer’s hands that were hewn only for destruction, The knuckles were lightly dusted with a lattice of interwoven scars. 

Thanatos did not realise that Gods could even wear scars. 

“I had not realised with whom I was speaking, or that you were entitled to more reverence,” Thanatos said. 

“Easy, little Godling.” Ares spoke fondly, a smile still gentling his words, softening his tone into a pleasing thrum. “I hardly anticipated for Hades to teach you decorum. I’m impressed that you had it in you to bow at all, nicely done, might I say.”

Something in Thanatos’ chest twitched, a flare of warmth that he belatedly identified as a burn of pride. His mouth pulled slightly at the corner as he spoke, voice still faltering. “Thank you.”

“We had always presumed that any spawn to crawl out of those pits would greet you with a snarl, like that slobbering hound of yours,” Ares said.

Thanatos’ mouth dropped fully into a frown, eyebrows drawing heavily down over his forehead with such an intensity that he could feel the crease that formed between them. 

“Well-” Ares barked, and now both hands were held aloft before him, palms raised in placation. “Not that we think of your abode as a  _ pit. _ I hear that some parts of it are quite lovely indeed, it’s just, I did not think you would have the same educational facilities as we do on Olympus-”

Were Thanatos to be presumptuous he would believe that Lord-God Ares had verbally dug himself into some hole, and was now frantically trying to clamber out of it. However, his mother had raised him to be virtuous, and it would be highly inappropriate for him to tarnish a God with such an accusation. 

“What I mean,” Lord Ares finally said, heaving some frantic breath, the corners of his voice tinged with nerves. “Is that I am pleased to finally meet you. I have been searching for quite some time now.”

“Wait,” Thanatos said, forgetting all pretences of formality as he gaped up at the man before him. “You have been looking for me?”

“Of course,” Ares dismissed, one eyebrow lurching up incredulously towards his hairline. “It is not a common occurrence for a new God to be introduced, let alone one so delightful. The entirety of Olympus has been scouring for you.”

Thanatos gaped, snapping his jaw shut and gritting his teeth until they felt prime to tremble and shatter beneath the pressure. 

“I had an unfair advantage I must confess, what with the overlap in our professional excursions. I saw you in Messenia, after the Dorians had that little spat with the locals. I tried to catch up with you but I must confess I got a little bit distracted by the carnage, and you do  _ not _ like to stick around after the work is done, huh?” Ares asked. His hands came to rest on his hips, broad frame imposing as he towered above. 

“There is much to be done elsewhere,” Thanatos said. 

“No matter, I understand, you like to see a job done. Your sisters are the same-” Thanatos blanched at their mention, and if Ares noticed the shudder that tore through him, he did not comment -”although they do like to spend some time in the fields after the work is done. Lovely ladies, they are.”

“I have heard so,” he said. He had not. 

Ares opened his mouth once more, his eyes, red like the wet meat of some raw wound, were alight with excitement. 

“I must ask,” Thanatos said, quickly. He ignored the thrill of fear-excitement that pulsed in his veins at the thought of having interrupted a God, “was it I who brought you here?”

“You?” Ares asked, narrowing his eye critically down at him. “Oh not at all! This is merely a delightful coincidence, one that I think may become quite common in our field of work. I am here on business myself.”

Thanatos cast a gaze around the barren fields, listened to the distantly excited hum of life in the city, the tune of birdsong on the wind. He narrowed his gaze suspiciously at the impression of the farmer and his oxen in the distance. 

To his great surprise, Ares laughed, hearty and sincere.

“Be easy, there is no danger yet! My labours are not all warfare and bloodletting, unfortunately,” Lord Ares sighed, voice wilting with the confession, as if it was truly a regret. “The socio-economic climate within the city here is frayed as of late, some may consider it delicate, others have reported it on the brink of collapse. I am here to tip the scale in my favour.” 

Thanatos stared at him hardly, taking in the soft smile that graced his lips, the ethereal richness to his skin, the dark eyes that had not once looked at him unkindly. 

“Then I suppose I shall be seeing you in these fields soon enough once more,” Thanatos said, the end tapering off into hesitation. Was he being too forthright? He had never before met a God that was not kin. The entire ordeal was intimidating. 

“I would be more than pleased to have your company,” Ares grinned, raising a large hand to clap roughly down onto his shoulder. Thanatos jostled bodily with the sudden weight, had to stumble and adjust his footing to stop from sprawling down to the ground. An ache resounded through the muscle, deep into the bone. That hand utterly dwarfed him, encompassing the span of his shoulder. 

“I-” he hesitated, adjusting to the feeling of another hand on him, to the eager trill of excitement and trepidation knotting up giddy in his gut -”I would like that, too.”

And so, a decade and a half into his existence, Thanatos formed his first professional relationship.

\---

Zagreus grew as the Gods did: unabashedly. Zagreus grew as children did: too quickly. 

Years - a mortal concept - were inconsequential to the Gods, and were not kept in the House of Hades outside of the loosest, most base concept of them. Time was tracked rather by worldly surface events; an influx of war, the spread of some disease, a pestilence consuming some ravaged country. 

One day Thanatos had watched the toddling form of some flame-footed Godling chase after his mother’s skirts. Then, he embarked on what had felt like a  _ short  _ venture to visit the sick-tents of some conflict, easing the suffering, bed-ridden dead to the Styx, Thanatos had met with Ares. He thought that their conversation had been  _ brief _ . 

But then he had returned to Hades, had delivered his report to their Lord Hades with the same sombre countenance he always adopted, and he had turned to discover that Zagreus had grown.

He was not entirely a man, but then again, as much as Thanatos was loath to admit it, neither was he. 

Height had discovered Zagreus in his absence, drawing him up to the lithe height that at least kept him out of trampling range for most of the denizens of the House. He was taller than most of the Shades now. Still dwarfed by the other Gods that he lived among, but it was no longer a chore to spot his head within a crowd of the dead. 

Whatever immortal blood imbued his body had not deigned it necessary to bring him to impossible heights. 

Muscle was still a stranger to him. Beneath the rich crimson of his chiton his chest was gaunt, ribs prominent against the rise of his skin. His arms were still thin, only beginning to fill with the burgeoning of strength that his new training regiment allowed him.

Were it not for his feet, for the way they hissed against cool flagstones and sputtered sparks when he would throw a tantrum, nothing about the boy really translated as princely, let alone Godly. 

Zagreus moved then, head snapping up and those disconcerting eyes narrowed in on Thanatos. That youthful face split into a grin, cheeks still a touch too-soft, jaw not yet fully defined. 

“Than!” he called, skirting neatly around the hovering form of their Gorgon keeper, clearing the space of the hall to fall by Thanatos’ side.

“You’ve been gone for-for,” Zagreus spluttered, hands gesturing wildly in the space between them. He had taken to wearing his laurel, imbued with rich colours that only befitted a prince. He must have realised that he did not have any way to track the passage of time, because he frowned and smiled up at Thanatos with some wry laughter touching his eyes. “For a  _ really _ long time.”

“I have work to attend to,” Thanatos said.

“I can’t wait for father to set me to something other than training,” Zagreus sighed, ruefully. “I can only play the same cords on a lyre so many times before it drives me mad. I’d accept  _ anything _ at this rate.”

Thanatos snorted, raising a hand to conceal the quirk of his mouth behind his palm. Zagreus must have caught the expression, because he levelled Thanatos with a grin so sincere it looked almost painful. 

He remembered Achilles’ teaching; exhausting field drills, fighting with sword and spear and sling. Learning to craft medicines with herbs that could mostly only be imported to their realms, making up poultices and learning the anatomy of themselves, of their enemy. Learning how to hold a quill, how to stroke it across parchment in a way to form letters. He remembered their music lessons, of pulling at a lyre until his fingers were capped with rough callouses, of singing until his throat ached.

They had nothing else to keep Zagreus occupied other than his lessons. 

He had been born a God in a world that did not need another one. No one - not even his Goddess-mother Nyx - had figured out what Zagreus was the God of.

That sort of directionlessness was troublesome even in a mortal capacity. Such a thing in a God was a travesty waiting to implode.

“I’m serious,” Zagreus whined. 

“I do not doubt that you are,” Thanatos replied, sincerely. 

For all that he was raised in the looming shadows of political standing, for all that his own birth right was a deception, Zagreus was dreadfully transparent. Often he did not need to speak, his expression would betray his mind, his heart. He brandished his emotions like a weapon, an extension of himself to be utilised. Thanatos could not imagine a word from him that was untrue.

“You get to leave all the time, and I’m stuck here with nothing to do,” Zagreus continued.

“You could study, as I did before you,” Thanatos said, “as Hypnos still is.”

His brother was still atrocious at writing, and between his shoddy penmanship and Hades appointing him as a bookkeeper, he needed all the help that he could get.

“Your brother is not the uh-” Zagreus hesitated, eyes flickering abashedly away. “The best studying partner, if you wanted me to take in my lessons I thought that you would recommend that I stray from his side.”

_ Your  _ brother. 

It had never been discussed, not really. Nyx had mothered Thanatos and Hypnos. Nyx had allegedly mothered Zagreus. Such things were not enough to make kin amongst the Gods, and Zagreus had decided in his youth that he preferred to have playmates over brothers.

Zagreus had never viewed Nyx’s children as his family.

Thanatos wondered if some part of him  _ knew _ . If he had heard the rumours of his birth and was too terrified to confront Hades with the prospect. 

“Do you want to spar?”

Zagreus asked, turning to pin him with an open glare. The plea had not been voiced, but it was reflected in his eyes; the tepid, twisting waters of that green-blue orb pinning him like a lance. He tended to avoid the darker eye. It was Hades’ own gaze that stared him down from it, and it cut across the boy’s face like some curse.

“I-” Thanatos started, feeling idle rejection poised on his tongue. 

_ It would be nice _ , some voice pressed, in the base of his skull, sounding decidedly like the over-zealous youth he once was. That he  _ still  _ was. He had not seen Zagreus fight since he was a child fumbling awkwardly with the hilt of a training blade looking unnatural in his palm. It had been so long since Thanatos had been able to lose himself in the sweet monotony of training drills. 

“I suppose that I have time,” he relented, and ignored the way Zagreus’ gaze lit up like a spark catching kindling. 

Zagreus led them to the courtyard, marble flagstones pristine and radiant. There was no greenery, only sandy grit was caught up between their crevices. Busts of some ancient depictions lined the distant corners, all of them distasteful; the watchful gaze of Cerberus in stone, the slaying of a distinctly familiar Gorgon, a beheaded statue that wore the same humble robes that Persephone once had.

Thanatos hurriedly looked away, pained by her memory. Mother had not smiled since she left them. 

His eyes instead found Zagreus, a training sword in each hand. He held them properly now, fingers flexing on the grain of the hilt as he tested their heft. An easy smile found him, softening his expression into something entirely unburdened. 

It was refreshing to see such a tender smile after knowing only an ageless turn of torment and war and death. 

“Are you beginning to doubt your odds?” Zagreus called, a teasing lilt to his tone, softening the barbed comment. 

“Not at all,” Thanatos replied, allowing a moment to set his scythe against a wall, well out of their way. Gods could not die, but they could still be wounded, and the last thing he needed was for Hades’ fool son to trip into his blade. “You were simply right; it  _ has  _ been a long time. I was only wondering if you had anything new to offer.” He raised a hand to his hood, pushing it back and taking a moment to brush the curtain of his hair into a knot at the base of his skull. “It seems that nothing has changed.”

He fastened his hair in place with a strip of leather. He would not consider hair-pulling beyond the Prince, especially with Achilles’ teaching methods.

Zagreus scowled, creasing across his forehead with hard lines. He worked his mouth soundlessly before shaking his head, settling instead for a rueful smirk. In one hand he extended a training sword towards Thanatos, which he took up. It was light in his grip, coarse and rough against his calloused fingers. 

“Then I will have to prove your assessment wrong,” Zagreus said, before lunging at him.

He fought like only a pupil of Achilles, and in turn, some of Chiron’s own lessons ran through him. He was still too over-eager, any form of restraint flickering across his face as a grimace, as if the prospect of timidness had wounded him. The sword became an extension of his own arm, weaving in flourished attacks that Thanatos had to take care to block and dodge around. Sometimes their blades would meet, the sandstone grind of wood chipping against wood, and Thanatos was surprised by the strength behind the attack. 

His technique was still sloppy, wild with energy and a desperate frenzy that only a man who’s heels were constantly licked by flame could possess. He had nowhere to go  _ but _ forward. He could not afford the time to be still.

“You have improved,” Thanatos relented, in a brief interval where Zagreus was pacing around him, sword-arm outstretched and some harried look touching his face. “However slightly that it was.”

“Do not let my father hear you,” Zagreus laughed, bitter and hollow. “He does not like to see me praised.”

He lunged again, ruthless and strong, and Thanatos only caught him with the barest edge of his own blade. He raised his free hand to wrap around the muscle of Zagreus’ forearm. Beneath the pads of his fingers the muscle there was hard, trembling with effort and slick with sweat. The boy’s eyes flickered from where their swords met to where that hand touched him, face drawing up decidedly blank, and Thanatos seized that hesitation. 

There was never time for hesitation in war.

Twisting his body, he knocked their swords wildly aside, causing Zagreus to fumble awkwardly after the arc of his blade. Thanatos swung his leg around, catching Zagreus in the soft spot behind his knee, digging the toe of his boot into the flesh and knocking him to the ground with a startled yell.

“Still not good enough,” Thanatos said.

Zagreus was still sprawled when he looked down at him, hands thrown out bonelessly around him. The barrel of his chest heaved with tired breaths, tufts of dark hair sticking to his skin with sweat. That red eye - the one Thanatos could not stand to see - was creased at the corners. Then, he threw his head back and laughed.

“That was not fair,” he groaned.

“If you anticipate your enemy to be civil and fair then why are you fighting them?” Thanatos asked.

Zagreus frowned up at him, the pursed frown of a Prince who was practiced in getting his own way. A boy who was not used to corrections that did not come from his Lord-father. 

“Because,” he said, eyes flickering away and up towards the desolate sky above. “Because Hades would demand it, I suppose.”

Thanatos smiled, a thin press of his mouth that felt like a grimace. He offered a hand down towards him, letting those fingers - thicker than his own, more hardened- tangle with his own as he tugged him up onto his feet again. 

When Zagreus stumbled, face narrowed into some hazy disorientation, Thanatos smiled in full.

“Would you like me to show you how to do that?” he asked.

Zagreus nodded so hard that Thanatos worried he would snap his own neck under the force of it. 


	3. Chapter 3

The Lounge was easily the premier of the House.

While the great majority of Hades’ abode was fashioned after the Godly likings of those up on Olympus, all sleek marble corridors and mosaic garnished courtyards, the Lounge reserved for itself a kind of jovial energy that almost resembled a surface tavern. 

It was one of the great many congregation places of the resident Shades, and as such it blossomed into a mimicry of the places they had loved in life.

Chatter swelled above the distant music of Orpheus, pooling through the open archway of the entrance, and the general clatter of the kitchenette added some rustic charm beyond that. It was an easy mantra of dead voices caught up in laughter, the chopping of knives against wooden boards, the clatter of tankard and wine classes and corks popping from the glass necks of ambrosia bottles. 

Zagreus often passed his free time in the Lounge, tucked up on one of the many plush lounge settees, purple velvet rich against his skin, or folded in one of the crimson armchairs, bent in conversation with the shimmering impression of a Shade. 

It was only when he had company that he would be found at one of the tables, littered with partially drained bottles and speckled with the flyaway droplets of mulled wine. 

Thanatos had no way to say how he had been coaxed into joining him and Megaera for the evening; only that he had not had the resolve to say no.

So he found himself folded against the table, nursing his third glass of wine and twice as many shots of ambrosia. The combination left an unpleasant taste in his mouth, the heady swill of summer wines mixing unnaturally with the sickly sweet curl of ambrosia as it stuck against the roof of his mouth, tacky. 

Across from him Zagreus had collected a neat pile of drinks. He had tasked himself with keeping up with Megaera, who was easily an entire bottle of wine in the lead.

“All I’m saying is that it’s not fair-” Zagreus threw out an arm in some vague gesture, voice surprisingly collected considering all of the alcohol he had ingested- “I should at least be allowed to accompany Cerberus on his duties. It’s all within the same realm!”

Thanatos met his imploring gaze, eyes alight with some fervid energy. It was like staring back at some imposing natural disaster; light catching up in his vibrant gaze like the ominous promise of a tsunami. His very spirit sparked with the potential to topple the foundations of Troy.

“Yelling at your father will not achieve anything,” he said.

“I submit a paper request, he throws it out! I ask him politely and he waves me away! At least by yelling he will at least acknowledge what I am saying,” Zagreus protested.

“Gods,” Megaera interjected, very neatly. She punctuated the statement with a quick sip from her glass, lips leaving a pink stain against the rim. Her thick hair was pulled back into a ponytail, the curtain of gossamer-sleek silver falling down over one shoulder. Thanatos was vaguely impressed that she had the energy to keep herself so presentable; if his days consisted of endless torture he would have lost the motivation decades ago. 

“Must you both always be so boring in your conversation?” she asked, moodily. A quirk appeared at the corner of her mouth, almost indecipherable if Thanatos had not already been staring. “Than, is your brother not here so I can at least have a decent chat? If I wished to listen to whining I would have stayed at work.”

“Which one?” he asked, just to be contradictory. 

She meant Hypnos of course, and the utterly unimpressed sneer she directed towards him conveyed that she knew he was goading her, and that she would not rise to the bait. The two of them had formed a fast friendship in the passing years, once Hypnos’ fervent hero worship had simmered down enough for him to speak with her outside of bumbling praise. 

“Well let me consider, perhaps Charon? As we all know he’s an excellent conversationalist,” she hissed.

“Is he?” Zagreus asked.

They both turned to him then, breaking whatever simmering, teasing tension had built up between them. Zagreus was watching them both expectantly, eyes dancing between them both and incapable of deciding on just where to settle.

“Right,” Thanatos bit out, “you are unacquainted.”

“He lingers around here so often, I don’t understand why he would not stop by some time,” Megaera said. “It would make it less of an effort to seek him out, I’m sure.”

“ _ You _ go to see him?” Zagreus blurted.

“Of course. Where else am I expected to find any decent products? Lord Hades certainly does not care to cultivate anything down here.” She levelled him with a blank expression, one neat eyebrow arching up towards her hairline as if the reasoning had been obvious.

Zagreus looked utterly lost.

“Charon smuggles goods to and from the surface,” Thanatos clarified.

“Or can acquire items, if the payment is right,” Megaera said. “Some quality too, he has pressed oils from some village in Crete that are better than anything else I’ve tried before. Sometimes he can bring down beetroot and it’s still  _ fresh _ .”

It was unnerving to see Megaera delighted, her humour was always announced by the feral baring of her fangs, breaking into a cruel smile.

Still, the expression caused Thanatos to smile in turn. It was such a rare thing for her to grin. 

“Beetroot?” Zagreus asked, voice trailing off into a frustrated whine. 

“It’s a food,” Thanatos said, hurriedly. “A vegetable.”

“You eat them?” Zagreus gasped, aghast. His mouth twisted down into some morbid grimace, eyes alight with excitement. He had never considered Megaera to be the rebellious type.

“ _ Oh, yes _ -” Megaera rolled her golden eyes, a look of utter disdain crossing her face. Thanatos hid his smile behind a sip of his wine, enjoying how Meg’s typically monotone voice slipped into mockery. “Of course, I eat imported mortal foods for fun. Coincidentally, my lips also just happen to be the  _ exact _ same shade as my whip and it has nothing at all to do with decades upon decades of perfecting a formula.”

“I-” Zagreus began, frowning- “I do not follow.”

Megaera groaned out a pained noise, running the flat of her palm up over her forehead as if to smooth away the frustrated creases that had collected there. “I’m going to kill him,” she said. 

“As if,” Zagreus laughed, and Thanatos stared at the crinkles that broke like facets at the corners of his eyes. “Anyway, I want to meet this Charon.”

“Good luck with that, he did not even visit the House before your birth,” Megaera dismissed. 

“Maybe I could go see him, you did say he was always nearby,” Zagreus said, softly.

It seemed as if all of those background noises fell away, until only a consuming silence surrounded them, occupied only by the rapid pounding of heart against his temple. In his peripheral he saw Megaera shift hesitantly, eyes widened into shock, mouth open around a surprised noise. 

Zagreus has  _ never _ left the House before. He had not even mentioned it. 

“You wouldn’t dare,” Megaera scoffed. She raised a hand to swat at Zagreus’ arm, fingers latching onto the muscle and squeezing affectionately. 

With her other hand she raised her glass up in a toast, and Zagreus followed suit. Thanatos raised his own, clinking the rim against each of theirs before bringing it back to take a draught. The bitter curl of wine did nothing to abate the strange, nervous feeling that coiled in his gut. 

\---

They did dare. 

The first night Zagreus ever snuck out of the House was capped with a full-moon up on the surface, plump and glimmering like a gossamer veil. That pristine light was not enough to penetrate into the depths of Hades. It was by shadow that Zagreus broke out into the cavernous depths of Tartarus. 

It was with only minor trepidation that Thanatos helped him. 

The length of the Styx flowed along the stone pathways. The roads were not manufactured by any hand, mortal or divine, and had been carved out of the very earth by the constant murmur of the river itself. The river was a deep, rich crimson, and beneath the surface it was swollen and dark with congealed blood. 

Tartarus itself was decidedly barren, built up of stone blocks and cavernous rooms. A few carven pillars propped up the domed ceilings, clambering up and disappearing into the inky swill of encroaching darkness above. Thanatos had no idea how high up the roof was. 

The House towered behind them, the imposing slab of obsidian gates that barely fell ajar to allow comings and goings. Thickets of grey algae clambering valiantly up out of the river to smooth across the brickwork, glossy snares peaking up out of the river as it flowed and ebbed.

Zagreus was ahead of him, ashen skin a radiant beacon as he stood amongst the bleakness of the realm. Before them endless blackness swelled, folding down into stifling antechambers and trapped cinderblock cells. The entire thing was drear, and Thanatos felt a lurch of nerves rise in his throat as he realised that it must seem awfully disappointing. 

But then Zagreus threw his head back and laughed. The sound crashed through him riding a wave of relief; and then, a slight curl of humour catching in his own chest. 

“Do you think they already know I’m gone?” he asked, turning to fix those harrowing eyes on him. In the darkness the nebulous swill of his red eye seemed to flare, the ripples of the Styx reflected back at him. 

Thanatos swallowed. Hypnos had been a critical part of their plan, and he had no qualms with not being able to join them on their  _ odyssey _ . He was content enough to have free reign of the House alone, outside of ensuring that its residents remained steadfast in their sleep. 

He hoped that Hypnos was careful to ensure their slumber lasted the entire venture. The thought of Hades tearing through Tartarus and catching him by the scruff was almost terrifying enough for Thanatos to suggest turning back.

Then Zagreus’ mouth parted into a smile, softened at the edges with sheer awe, and Thanatos lost any thought beyond committing that expression to memory. 

Something strange and queasy pulsed in his gut. The sour turn of alcohol,  _ probably _ .

“If we do not press on it will be pointless, anyway,” Thanatos said. He continued forward, wincing at the unpleasant press of his boot against the slick embankment of the Styx. 

“How do you even know you’re going the right way?” Zagreus called after him.

He had to scamper to catch up with Thanatos’ stride, falling into place beside him as they picked their way along the river. Thickets of bramble pushed up from the sod, dead grey leaves curled in on themselves and smelling distinctly of rot. They sizzled and popped as Zagreus stepped on them, orange flame licking across the ground with a hissing sear. 

“Just follow the river,” Thanatos assured. “He will know.”

_ I hope. _

They covered a few lengths in silence, only the tread of the ground beneath their step and the idle trickle of the Styx as it churned. Thanatos’ treacherous gaze often slanted over to take in Zagreus’ profile, eyes alight in fascination, skin awash in the crimson reflection of the river, mouth split around a sincere grin that rose a dimple in his cheek. Little space was left between them, with every-other step Zagreus’ shoulder would jostle against his own, skin smooth and dry and radiating a profound heat. 

From such proximity Thanatos could smell him; the rich fragrance of ambrosia, heady undertones of mulled wines and the lavender scent of Megaera’s perfume. Then beneath that, a smell entirely his own, layers of sulphur and charcoal and the pang of raw blood.

A large, flat wall ran alongside them a few feet across the embedded pathway. Occasionally a slat would appear in the surface, a juncture that would delve deeper beneath the surface into some chambers. Zagreus looked at all of them with fascination and Thanatos could feel the questions brewing between them, could see them in the purse of Zagreus’ lips.

But Zagreus said nothing; he merely looked, and so Thanatos did not press it. 

It was only after they passed, when those tunnels were vague impressions on his memory, that Zagreus spoke up. His voice was careful and measured, drawing out slowly to occupy the space between them. 

“Do people live down there?” he asked. 

“Some do,” he replied.

“Like, forever?” Zagreus pressed.

“For eternity, yes.” Thanatos did not turn his gaze, but in his peripheral he made out the impression of Zagreus staring boldly at him. His forehead creased between the furrowing of his brows. 

“Why can they not join us in the House? I imagine after a lifetime up on the surface that this dank place must be some terrible fate,” he said.

“Some people warrant a terrible fate,” Thanatos replied.

Zagreus stopped, drawing up short as the words swelled between them. Thanatos turned, finding his face open in surprise, mouth caught up in a half-formed phrase. The look he fixed on him was imploring, eyes round and face still flushed with excitement. He said, “surely you do not mean that.”

_ Ah,  _ Thanatos sighed, softly. Zagreus was so sheltered; it was unknown what his mother Nyx or Lord Hades had told him of the mortal world up on the surface. He likely did not know of the base corruption that a simple soul could fall to. If Thanatos were to tell him of Achilles’ deeds at Troy it would break his heart. 

“You do not know mortals,” Thanatos said, very softly. Zagreus gaze shuttered, falling down to stare at the ground. His dark lashes acted as a divide between them, and so Thanatos turned to continue walking. “Come on,” he said.

A beat of silence passed. Then, he heard Zagreus’ hissing footsteps as he hurried to catch up once more.

“Most of them end up in Elysium though, right?” he asked.

“I-” Thanatos paused, snippets of memories catching up in his mind:  _ a man with thick braided hair, a celtic chief; the thin smile of a steppe warrior as he had granted him reprieve from lifelong pain; the ranting of a girl who made the mistake of loving a poet _ \- “I believe that most of them do, yes.”

Seemingly satisfied with that conversation, or unwilling to fully shatter the illusion, Zagreus continued on without further complaint. Now the House was not even an impression to be made out behind them, lost as they were in the miasma of encroaching darkness. Were it not for the unnatural radiance of the Styx and the orange glow that coiled around Zagreus’ calves they would be utterly consumed by the darkness. 

Before them the Styx broadened, until more of their venture was spent pressed up against that running wall to allow the river ample berth. The repetitive lapping of the current against the bank was soothing. Then, beneath that, there was the trill of bubbles.

“ _ What _ was that?” Zagreus barked.

“Just a fish, nothing to concern yourself with-”

“A  _ fish? _ !” Zagreus crowed, catching Thanatos around the crook of his elbow, pulling him to a jarring stop that made his head spin. “Like, an actual living fish in the water?”

“I do not know if they are necessarily alive any more than we are,” he said.

“I feel alive,” Zagreus replied, seriously. “If it’s breathing it must be alive.”

Then, breaking away from him entirely, Zagreus padded up to the cusp of the river and stared at the patch of bubbles. It was a miniscule thing, almost impossible to distinguish in the darkness. 

“I do not think you will see it,” Thanatos warned. 

“I just want to look,” Zagreus replied. “I’ve never seen a live fish before.”

It was impossible to determine how long they stayed like that; Zagreus watching the water with an utterly mesmerised smile; Thanatos watching that smile and ignoring how the queasy, warm feeling plumed once more in his gut. 

Eventually the bubbles subsided, drawing away from the bank and being submerged beneath the heavier torrents of the river. Zagreus drew himself up and returned to Thanatos’ side with a satisfied smile bringing a shock of bright mirth to his eye.

Their trek eventually brought them up a gradual incline, and as they broached forward into the new chamber the walls stretched out around them and disappeared into the darkness. Zagreus, who had been running his hand along the damp surface, snatched his arm back to his chest with an affronted noise catching in his throat. Sconces were bracketed to the walls, hoisting up reedy looking torches that were wrapped in a thin white linen that burned at an unnatural hue.

Thanatos would never be able to accurately guess for how many centuries those torches had burned, or what fey magics aided them on. 

The realm beneath their feet belonged to Hades in title, but he knew well enough that it was the domain of some different being entirely. 

Before them a new feature appeared out of the darkness, illuminated in golden light that cast cruel shadows around the construct. A collection of rickety wooden poles were bound up with twine to form an impromptu dock. The river broke up over the surface, leaving the length of the pier wet and glossy in the dim light. 

There was a boat docked there, a long thing carven of ashen wood. It was entirely simple, ungarnished apart from an iron fixture mounted at the back, which held aloft a softly sputtering lantern, and a similar fixture mounted to the front, which bore the sculpted resemblance to the three heads of Cerberus. The lantern swayed with the boat, casting spiralling shadows and flashes of colour across the floor and the bright surface of the Styx. 

A figure was looming up on the pier, a long oar snatched up between two lithe hands. 

Thanatos smiled, a pull of his lips that did not feel entirely natural. Then Zagreus turned to him, and the stricken expression caused the humour to drop instantly from his expression. 

“What is wrong?” he asked.

“Well-” Zagreus seemed stricken, soft eyes downcast and lip dimpled with the impression of his own teeth- “what if he doesn’t like me?”

_ You’re our Prince, he has no choice, _ Thanatos thought, sourly. Then, shrugging, he said, “you’re my friend. What isn’t there to like?”

“Right,” Zagreus nodded, looking for all the world like he had no faith in that statement, “of course.”

When was the last time he had met someone? Thanatos wondered, as they stepped up to the lip of the dock. Nearly every being in the House had been a fixture since his birth, and any others he met within his first few mortal decades. Only the Shades seemed to be new arrivals, and Zagreus regarded them all in the same vein: like an old friend. 

Charon turned to them as they approached, One spectral orb of an eye peaked out from the layers of black cloth, bundled up beneath thick swatches of cloaks and veils and the shadow of a heavy hat. His shoulders were adorned with multiple thick braids of golden chain, accented with embedded jewels and finery. A plume of purple smoke coiled up from a slit in the guise, rising like mist before gradually fading.

“Well, here we are,” Thanatos said, a little awkwardly. Although Charon was not looking at him - for his eye was unblinkingly trained on Zagreus - he felt very much as if he was being criticised. “Zag, this is my brother Charon.” He swept his arm in an encompassing gesture between them. “Charon, this is Prince Zagreus. Hades’ son.”

“It is a profound honour to meet you,” Zagreus blurted, voice laced with that false political nicety that mother had taught him. “I have heard many things.”

That purple eye remained fixed, and another puff of thick air broke from within the cloak - smaller this time. Then, with the creak of bone drawing over bone, Charon opened his mouth:

“ _ Hhahhh. _ ”

“Yes, quite,” Zagreus bit out. He turned his head subtly to Thanatos, his eyes flickering in their mutual plea of: ‘ _ Help _ .’ 

“Charon did not master speech as we did,” Thanatos explained. “He did not need it for his work, and so we make do by his own systems and logic.” 

“You could have told me that,” Zagreus snapped, the venom strained around his faux-smile. 

Charon had still not broken his gaze, and Zagreus seemed intent on meeting it. 

“Why would his inability to speak stop you from wanting to meet him?” Thanatos asked.

“It-” he looked away, glancing seriously at towards him- “it would not.”

“Then there is no problem to be found,” Thanatos said.

At that Charon grumbled a deep noise, caught up in his throat like a hacking cough. A thick cloud of smoke seeped from his mantle, and Thanatos winced at the taste of decay as it caught in his nose. 

“Mo- Nyx, told you about me?” Zagreus asked, hesitantly. He had turned back to Charon, and seemed unsure on how to position himself.

It was no great secret that Zagreus had a short stature - it was not even something that the God overly minded. But now, craning his neck back to stare up at Charon’s imposing form, it was evident that he did not quite know how to address him.

Charon made a deep rumbling noise, catching viscerally, and Zagreus nodded, serious: he took the noise for the affirmation that it was. 

Thanatos smiled, ignoring the wave of relief that washed through him. Nerves that he did not realise were on-edge began to settle, and he found that he was quite enjoying watching Zagreus stumble through a pleasant conversation with his brother. He did not quite understand why he felt such a desire for Charon to like him, other than the notion that perhaps it would be nice for Zagreus to find another ally. 

At some point in their discussion, flowing easier with each easy laugh from Zagreus and grating howl from Charon, his brother reached out to gesture with his skeletal hand. One long, decrepit finger pointed first at Zagreus, and then the too-prominent knuckle bent with a crack and pointed vaguely in the direction they had come from. 

“Ah,” Zagreus breathed, understanding easily. “Nyx does not know of this, so  _ please _ do not tell her. No one knows. I just really wanted to meet you, seeing as I had heard so much of you. And, you know-”  _ they were allegedly kin _ .

Gradually, Thanatos lost focus of their chatter. He was content to lean back as they became better acquainted. He had no desire to hijack the conversation from Zagreus, who may never get this opportunity again. At some point Zagreus reached out and touched the ore, pale hands tracing reverently over the golden shaft and picking out the engraved details. Charon offered up some bumbling explanation that was part-mist and mostly groaning, and Zagreus nodded pleasantly the entire time. 

Eventually, it became apparent that time - or whatever approximation they kept - was drawing on. Thanatos unfurled his arms from where they had been crossed over his chest, and he stepped off of the dock to stare off towards the direction of the House.

“We should be going,” he said.

Charon and Zagreus uttered surprisingly similar noises of protest, both fixing him with utterly betrayed stares. 

Thanatos shucked off the guilt, levelling them with the most serious expression he could muster. 

“Do you really entrust Hypnos to keep the entire House under wraps for this long? I would be surprised if we were not already discovered,” he said.

Charon laughed, a grim, terrible thing. 

Zagreus sighed dejectedly, drawing away reluctantly from Charon’s side. He turned back to meet that eye, and Thanatos saw that none of his earlier trepidation or fear remained. 

“I will come and see you again, if I can,” he said, seriously. “I quite enjoyed our conversation.”

He went to pull away, but Charon interrupted the motion with a gruff murmur. Thanatos watched as Zagreus turned back to him, and Charon lifted up part of his cloak to reveal a leather pouch attached to a thin belt at his hip. His thin fingers snaked into the sack, and the unmistakable clatter of coin against coin rattled out. When he withdrew his hand, a single golden coin was pressed between two fingers.

He offered it out to Zagreus, who accepted it into his cupped palms with a look of utter astonishment. 

“Truly?” he breathed, and Charon’s hat bobbed in the approximation of a nod. 

“You do know this is a ruse,” Thanatos sniped, feeling his lips twitch up into a smile despite himself. “First he gets you obsessed with the concept of material value, and then when you have accumulated a small fortune he robs you blind.”

“What-” Zagreus, who had no concept of finance outside of petty bartering, began.

“Don’t.” Thanatos held up a hand, cutting him off abruptly. “I refuse to teach you about the economy, or inflation, or how investments work. Charon can tell you  _ all _ about it.”

“That’s not fair,” Zagreus protested, “I don’t know when I’ll get to see him next!”

“It’ll give you something to look forward to,” Thanatos replied. 

Zagreus slipped the coin into a crease of fabric in his chiton, tucked safely beneath his belt. They left Charon reluctantly, waving him away with enough conversation that a smog of purple layered between them like a haze. 

As they walked away Zagreus kept turning over his shoulder and laughing, or waving his hand in excited little motions. It was only when he stopped bothering to turn and check that Thanatos knew that they had left that large chamber well enough behind them.

Their return trip was made in utter silence, companionable and tepid. It was soothing, to be in his presence and have to worry about nothing other than placing one foot before the other and listening to the ambience of the river, or the gentle rasp of Zagreus’ breathing. Not even his own thoughts encroached on that peace. 

Eventually, the impression of the House drew up before them. 

Thanatos was relieved to find it in the same state they left it; sombre and sullen. An obsidian black construction with only the barest flickers of candlelight peeking through the window slots. He had half expected to return to the place ablaze with fire, and with Hades enraged beyond consolation. 

In his peripheral Zagreus heaved a shaky sigh, and he realised that he was not the only one to harbour such a fear.

He moved to begin picking his way down the path towards the entrance, but something caught him around the wrist. 

Thanatos glanced down to find Zagreus’ fingers encircling his arm, touch gentle and skin warm like the heat that poured from a furnace. He flickered his gaze up to find that Zagreus was staring at him, expression serious. 

“Thank you,” he said. “I know you could have gotten into trouble for that, but I just wanted to thank you.”

“It was nothing,” Thanatos replied.

Something about the expression Zagreus adopted was causing nerves and some flighty, fear-adjacent emotion to swell in his chest. That same, irritating, pleasant feeling was turning his gut gooey and warm. 

“It was everything,” Zagreus pressed. His fingers, where they rested delicately over the tender underside of Thanatos’ wrist, squeezed. “It was the most I have ever seen in my existence.”

The ethereal light of the Styx was cast upon him fully, washing across his pale skin and imbuing it with a dark sheen. It highlighted the shape of his face, drawing across the handsome cut of his jaw, the bridge of his nose, lighting up the joy in his eyes. 

Thanatos, against all better judgement, allowed his own gaze to fall down to his lips. 

They were parted, just slightly. The soft curve of his full lower lip hosted little indents from where Zagreus had gnawed on it in thought. As he puffed out his next breath the air misted across their soft surface.

Thanatos swallowed thickly, a notch of something hard catching in his throat. The fingers around his wrist were wound tight like a vice. 

He wanted to kiss him.

The urge was entirely unfounded and yet profoundly natural. There was no great revelation that came with the thought. Only the carnal desire to slant his own mouth over Zagreus’ and to taste the ambrosia on his tongue. 

Zagreus was still staring at him when he looked back, cheeks dark with a flush that rose up against his skin. His eyes, bright as they were, had been reduced to dilated black irises framed only by a single thread of colour. 

A pulse of desire lanced through him, flaring against his nerves and flaying him down to the bone. And, although no words were broken between them, he  _ knew _ the same thought had flitted through Zagreus’ mind. It was betrayed by his expression, mouth parted, eyes wide, chest hitching with a startled breath. 

“We- we should go,” Zagreus stammered. 

Then he pulled away, a frigid bite of cold drawing across the impression his hand had left. Thanatos watched his retreating back, the taught wind of muscle and the cut of his shoulders shadowed in the night. 

He had no other option but to follow.

They made it only a few steps further before Zagreus turned, peering over his own shoulder. He caught Thanatos’ eye with his own, and his voice came out as a sincere murmur as he spoke:

“Truly, thank you.”


	4. Chapter 4

Thanatos rarely found himself in the House, and the snatches of moments he managed to find there were brief and monotonous. Above all he had to present his reports to the Lord Hades. He would stand at the base of his throne, head bowed in modesty and listen to the God berate his minor mistakes. Occasionally he would throw a passive compliment in amongst the dressing-down, like some mortal lord throwing a scrap of bone for a hound, and Thanatos despised how he would preen under those kind words despite knowing better.

After Hades it was simple; he would speak shortly with Achilles, would listen to him play if he was in the mood for it (he very rarely was.) Then he would spare a few words for his brother, Hypnos, who had graduated into his newfound height and his position as a doorman of the Styx seemingly simultaneously. Thanatos could not bear the thought that his  _ younger _ brother was now taller than him, so he made a conscious effort to float slightly taller next to him, if only to cow him further. Their conversations were always stunted and awkward; he could not fathom how someone so sloppy and downright lacklustre could have saddled such a position. He certainly did not command the respect that the doorman of Hades would herald. 

But he spoke to him regardless, because if he did not, those soft eyes would fix on him and follow him with the weight of tremendous longing, and Thanatos could not stomach it.

It was only with his mother who he found respite, shadowed away in her chambers. They would sit before the hearth and she would tell him the names of the stars and how the constellations would shift and shudder in the skies like some mechanism of brass.

Occasionally he would join Megaera, if she made a scarce appearance in the lounge. Of the Furies she was the most timid by far; her punishment was just and swift - she did not bask in the torture as her sisters did. He thought, perhaps, they had some kindred thing between them due to that. Yes, they were both cruel, but they were not their sisters. 

They could both be worse.

He never put that thought to words - she would laugh him out of the Underworld entirely if he dared, if she did not lash at him outright for it. But he would think it anyway, if they shared any ambrosia together, heady on the tongue and loosening his mind. 

Hypnos’ eyes were not the only ones that tracked him throughout the House. Their resident Prince made a habit of following him with sharp stares, as if Thanatos could not feel the weight of it burning into his nape.

He was used to the weight of a gaze on him. It was not uncommon for some of the Shades to recognise him and to stare in surprise. But something about the piercing shock of Zagreus’ was different, he could feel the weight of it lance into his gut, trilling with nervous energy. 

That feeling was upon him now, trying to pass by the lounge unnoticed and make for his mother’s company. 

“Thanatos!” he heard, his name called in a pitchy voice that croaked around the sounds. “H-hey!”

Thanatos winced, allowing himself a moment to silently mourn the loss of any remotely peaceful break from his work. Instead, he pulled his shoulders up into some regal stance, angling his chin so that his head was proud; his expression neutral, and he turned toward the voice.

Zagreus was leaning up against a table in the lounge, otherwise occupied exclusively by Shades.

He was alone, and that was the deciding factor really. He did not need to call for him. A man with a smile that split his face like the gleam of gemstone in dull rock; a voice that wove stories like a poet. That gleaming wit with nothing to test it against. 

It was cruel for Zagreus to be alone, and Thanatos felt obliged to mend that, if he could.

The lounge reeked of pomegranate as he entered, curling like heady sweetness in the air. Incense burned in high censers, pooling a heady fog of pungent smoke into the low-lit room. Candles sputtered in their mounted sconce, red flame splaying against the dark stone wall.

That flame was nothing compared to the spark of fire that rippled against the toned muscle of Zagreus’ calves. 

“You’ve-”  _ filled out, gotten a sharper jaw, seem to have gotten shorter? _ \- “changed.”

His hair came down to brush at his shoulders, thick black tendrils that writhed as he moved like serpents, the slick pour of oil over pallid skin. 

Zagreus was staring soundlessly at him - not  _ at _ him, he knew, those wide eyes level at the crown of his head. Thanatos sighed tiredly, raising a hand to pinch his fingers against the bridge of his nose. 

“You’re free to speak, this  _ is _ your domain,” he said.

“Not yet it’s not,” Zagreus bit out, just to be contradictory. And then: “you’ve cut your hair.”

He made it sound like an accusation. His mouth pulled with obvious distaste at the corners, some sour grimace that showed in the flash of his teeth. 

“I have,” Thanatos said.

“But  _ why _ ?” Zagreus cried - actually cried out. Behind him, in the kitchenette, he heard the dull  _ thunking  _ rhythm of the chef’s knife falter and pause, before falling into place once more. 

Thanatos raised his hand further up, rasping over the velvet softness of his fine hair, sheared almost to a crop at the corners. There was still length to the top of it, but the tips no longer graced across the base of his spine as it once had. Now they scarcely touched the shell of his ears. 

“It is more professional,” he dismissed. “If I am to bring death, I may as well appear as if I know what I am doing. Souls are more compliant when they are confident.” 

He did not mention the fact that Lord Ares had scoffed at the sight of him. Dismissed the curl of embarrassment driving his hands into motion after the God had called him impractical. 

“But I liked it long,” Zagreus whined.

“Did you now?” he asked, if only to savour the way Zagreus flushed with a crimson heat, darkening across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. 

His face was easy to fall into emotion, touched with warmth when embarrassed or enraged, drawing dangerously pale when nervous or scared. Thanatos had seen him turn green, only once, after attempting to eat a fig that Charon had used to ply the young Lord out of some coin.

Thanatos had been too engaged in his own morbid curiosity to chide his brother for the act. Then afterward, he had been too preoccupied with his childish hysterics as he laughed and Zagreus had cried. He had never seen a God of the Underworld eat mortal foods before, they subsided on ambrosia and wines alone, on the burned tributes of those living on the surface. They could stomach pomegranates, but it was a novelty that Thanatos grew out of when he was still toddling. 

They,  _ apparently _ , could not eat figs.

Back then they had been younger, faces still softened with fat and undefined. Before him now Zagreus stood a man in all but his height, which Hades reassured them would come as he stepped into his true Godhood. 

No one commented on the fact that they did not know what that  _ was _ .

“You do look, though,” Zagreus babbled, eyes still astray and unwilling to look at even the table between them. Face still flushed with dark colour as he spoke. “Look professional, I mean, I-”

“Thank you,” Thanatos said, sharply, saving him from trying to martyr himself on his own words. Zagreus was not very proficient with his speech, but he spent so much of his early studies in mimicking the ways of his father it was hardly surprising that all he learned was fumbling words and expectant demands.

“Yeah, well, I-” Zagreus raised a hand to brush awkwardly across the cut of his jaw, rough fingers audibly rasping over the skin there. “I won’t keep you.”

Thanatos blinked, narrowing his eyes into slits. He picked across Zagreus hesitantly; everything looked to be in place. Still, it was disconcerting. Zagreus never threw away an opportunity to hoard Thanatos’ attention, to waste his precious free time with idle games and mindless chatter. 

He heard from Hypnos that in his gawky-youth Zagreus had petitioned his father to keep Thanatos in the House, as a companion to him. He had only asked once, and Thanatos did not need to ask for the gritty details of the outcome. The results were written in the way that Hypnos winced as he spoke; in the way Zagreus was so bitterly resentful of his father; in the way that nothing came of it.

The proposition would even be appealing, if it were not for the raking claws of the dead that burrowed into his bones. 

Still, Zagreus would not meet his eye, so Thanatos left him without further word. 

\---

Miraculously, he managed to steal away enough time with his mother for her to tell him the story of the constellation Delphinus. She even divulged his curiosity with song, running the slender length of her fingers over the strings of her lyre, accompanying spoken word with delicate tune.

They had reached the finale of the thing now, her hands eloquently running along the strings in some flourish. Her voice solemn and hard as she wove the final thread into the tapestry of the tale.

A resounding bang echoed throughout the House. 

Nyx fell silent, lips pressing into a pert frown. For a moment her hands hovered awkwardly before her, and Thanatos could have envisioned her as a girl, not entirely grown into her Godhood; eyes wide and mouth parted into a nervous gape. 

“I wonder what he has done now,” Nyx sighed, forlorn, as another shuddering sound racked along the very foundations of Hades. The solid stone walls around them seemed to shudder at that terrible beat, almost the distant murmur of a war drum. 

It sounded so fearsome because, to any outsider, it  _ was _ . To hear Hades’ thundering step as he raged, as he fretted and paced with heavy foot. 

“I wonder who exactly you mean,” Thanatos replied.

They were both staring fruitlessly at the door to the chamber, obsidian like the night, unblemished. 

“Hades would not address Hypnos like this,” Nyx stated, simply. The ‘ _ he would not dare’ _ went entirely unspoken, but understood regardless.

Nyx resided in the House in terms of mutual agreement. She was not held captive within the walls as so many of the other residents were. The Gods of Olympus respected her immensely - Ares sung her praise indefinitely when he discovered that Thanatos was her lad, child of the dark in which the most sublimely violent war was planned and raged. He had wanted to send her a gift. Thanatos had cast it into the Styx the moment he was alone with the token. 

Hades respected her only slightly. His fear of her was what allowed their mutual cooperation to flourish. Thanatos and Hypnos had been treated as princes in their time because, so long as Hades relied on their Goddess-mother, they technically  _ were _ . 

“I know,” Thanatos sighed, wincing as he eased himself up out of his comfortable recline. Although he had never been tasked with it in any official capacity, he still considered himself to be responsible for some of Zagreus’ behaviour. He had pushed the young prince into enough ridiculous situations in the past that he felt somewhat obligated to come to his aid when possible. 

He made his way out of the chambers and down the halls with ease, bracing himself to face whatever absurd quandary Zagreus had gotten himself mixed up in this time around. It was simple to follow the heated baritone of their Lord Hades, a background babble punctuated with harsh reprimands. The halls were thick with Shades, the hazy figures lingering and all attempting to seem as if they were doing anything other than eavesdropping. 

Achilles was still at his post, reclined almost luxuriously against the marble pillar. Sometimes it seemed as if he forgot that he was no longer royalty.

“I would give them a moment, lad,” he greeted. A smirk cut across his features like a scar, face pressed as he at least made an effort to squash it down. His eyes dimpled at their corners.

“What has he done?” Thanatos asked, reluctantly. 

“I fear that I would be incapable of properly describing it,” Achilles replied. 

“You are not inspiring confidence in me,” Thanatos said.

“I do not mean to,” was Achilles’ reply. 

From the interior of the reception chamber Lord Hades’ voice grew in intensity, appearing to draw all of the warmth from the halls. Even the torches, affixed as they were in the sconces around them, seemed to flicker and dim beneath his wrath.

“Of all the foolhardy and downright absurd things you could have done to yourself, this is assuredly one of the most ridiculous,” Lord Hades scolded. Thanatos could almost trace out his expression from that tone; heavy brows knitted together, a knot of irritation forming between them, his thin mouth pulled into a sneer that revealed the threat of his teeth.

“It’s not that bad,” Zagreus protested.

“It’s an embarrassment,” Hades replied. “You’re an embarrassment.”

Only silence followed his words, swelling to an uncomfortable pressure within the House. Thanatos grimaced, glancing down at the tile beneath his boots, ignoring the way his heart gave an uncomfortable shudder. Not from his own discomfort, but on behalf of Zagreus. That boy craved nothing more than the compassion of his father, and he knew how deep those words would cut. 

“Am I dismissed?” Zagreus asked, voice decidedly small in the consuming silence.

“Nothing would please me more,” Hades said.

Thanatos shared a sidelong glance with Achilles. Any wry amusement had been scrubbed from his expression, leaving only trace remnants of pity touching his eye. Sorrow was not an unfamiliar face for him to adorn, and so when he bowed his head and turned away from the approaching footsteps, Thanatos could not fault him for it.

“Please tell me you did not hear the entirety of that,” Zagreus asked. He sounded so  _ tired _ . Which was absurd; Gods did not grow weary. 

“I-” Thanatos began, glancing away from their mentor and looking up to face Zagreus. His breath caught hollowly on his teeth, hitching cruelly like grit in his throat. “What did you  _ do _ ?!”

“Not you as well,” Zagreus whined.

Where once his hair had curled leisurely against the tops of his shoulders, easily swept back into a tight knot or tied into thick ropes of slick braid, now there were ropey strands of disjointed layers.  _ He looks worse than the dead _ . Thanatos traced his eye from his crown, where the top-most layer had been butchered at different angles, some lengths almost touching the paleness of his scalp while other lengths still managed to hang beyond his jaw. 

“What could have possibly possessed you to do this,” Thanatos asked.

“I cut my hair,” he dismissed, face twisting with some grim annoyance. It was his father’s temper, contorting his mouth into a frown. He folded his arms across his chest, bunched muscle layered over muscle. 

“You most certainly did not,” Thanatos said.

“It didn’t look that difficult,” Zagreus replied. He would not meet his eye, own gaze affixed quite certainly at some empty space behind Thanatos. 

“Did you use your sword?” Thanatos breathed. “I cannot even remotely comprehend how it ended up like  _ this _ -”

Zagreus did not reply; he simply bunched up his arms, thick fingers tightening against his own skin, digging in like talons. His head tilted abashedly to the side, eyes squinting as he made a colossal effort not to look at him. 

“You used your sword,” Thanatos repeated, frowning as Zagreus flinched. 

Some phantom touch started up in him at the sight, a hollow ache that swelled in his chest and throbbed dully against his ribs. He breathed in and that thing  _ hurt _ . It felt almost like pity.

“Come along,” he sighed, sweeping his arm out to gesture back along the halls, towards their chambers.

“What?” Zagreus asked, softly. 

“Do you wish for me to mend it or not?” Thanatos asked, hardly. Then, schooling his expression into something severe, he pressed: “well, I will salvage what I can. You have butchered yourself so much I fear the only real solution will be shearing you bald.”

Zagreus blanched, mouth falling open into a pathetic ‘oh’. 

He followed Thanatos silently. Where he would usually seize the opportunity to prod and regale him for tales of the lands outside of the House, Zagreus now only bowed his head as they passed by the leering phantom faces of lingering Shades. Cast as they were against the stark light of the torches they appeared as if walking corpses; translucent black vapour pulled taught over the ghostly impression of skulls.

Thanatos led them to his personal chambers. His rooms sat untouched for endless stretches of time, remaining immaculate even in his absence. Not even a bare sheen of dust had found purchase on the stone tables or metal framework that made up his bed. There wasn’t anywhere else for mess to make itself known. Apart from a thickly woven rug that occupied the central space of the floor, there were no other personal items to be found. Thanatos had not spent enough time in the House to make an impression.

A small collection of trinkets were neatly ordered on the surface of a marble desk. It was an ugly thing, cloven of black stone, looming against the farthest wall. A small water basin sat on the surface, next to a stack of parchments and a capped ink well. His quill was nowhere to be seen, but he assumed that Hypnos would be able to account for it if Thanatos were to press. 

A flash of gold caught his eye; a small pair of scissors, blades sharp and adorned with a filigree pattern of black swirls.

He snatched them up with one hand, letting the cool weight adjust against his strangely clammy palm. A strange twinge had started up in his gut, pulling errantly at his insides until he could feel the pulse of his heart echoing against his temple. 

“I-” he began, turning to find Zagreus staring at him. Thanatos faltered, letting his mouth clamp shut as he was levelled with that intense stare. There was a tension settled across Zagreus’ features, forming a hard knot between his brows. His gaze was just slightly off; unwilling to meet his own. Thanatos could not tell if the wet sheen touching his eye was imagined or not. “You’ll need to sit down.”

_ That _ got Zagreus’ attention. His head whipped between Thanatos and the scarcity of the room, his focus finally falling onto the freshly made bed as the trace of a fumbling smile touched his mouth. 

“Right, well-” Zagreus started towards the bed before faltering. The flame that coiled around his heels hissed as it met the cool marble of the floor. “By your leave, then.”

“I just said that you could,” Thanatos snapped.

“I know!” Zagreus protested, throwing out an arm in an aborted little shrug. “It’s just, that’s where you sleep and I didn’t want to presume-”

“It’s really not,” Thanatos dismissed.

“Right,” Zagreus said. Then, as he haltingly took a seat on the bed, perched just on the very end, so that Thanatos could stare only at the back of his head, he said: “Speaking of which, why is it that you are so rarely at the House?”

_ The House _ he would call it. The Halls of Hades were never a home to the boy.

“The mortals insist on their deaths, I am afraid to say.” Thanatos occupied himself by closing the distance between them, raising his free hand to thread his fingers lightly through the choppy mess that had once been Zagreus’ hair. The pads of his fingers snagged against soft tangles, nails rasping across the skin of his scalp. He traced the length of his parting, following the curve of his head and marvelling at the silken feeling as he brushed against the remaining hair. 

He caught himself just as he considered petting those tresses the way he would scratch at Cerberus in passing. He drew back hesitantly, body coiled with tension, as if any wayward flinch would make Zagreus aware of just how uncomfortable he should be after that display.

“Let me know if I hurt you,” Thanatos said, taking the opportunity to snatch up a wayward curl, splintered at the ends, and to begin to cut in short, smooth motions. 

Zagreus huffed, a soft puff of air that was almost soundless between them. The way his shoulders went tense, muscle contracting and smooth skin flexing, betrayed his humour more than any laughter. 

“As if you had the potential,” Zagreus said.

“I think you forget who it is you are speaking with,” Thanatos pressed, chidingly. 

“No, I really haven’t,” Zagreus replied. 

Thanatos had not even the semblance of a response for that statement, for that  _ tone _ . He merely hummed some dismissive noise, pouring his attention instead into trying to remedy the Prince of Hades of his terrible mistake. 

It truly was not as unsalvageable as they had made it seem. Yes, one of the sides was sheared almost down to the skin, and there was little Thanatos had the capacity to do to remedy that other than to trim the rest of Zagreus’ hair down into a fade that blended neatly into it. The soft fuzz rasped against his fingers as he worked his hand over it, brushing the trimmings away to tumble to the floor - Dusa would soundlessly clear them away again after he was gone once more for the surface. 

There was still an ample mound of hair on top, and Thanatos managed to shape it into something resembling respectable. He finalised the last of the clipping, brushing his palm from Zagreus’ forehead to the base of his skull, slicking the hair back to fall naturally into place.

“You should let it grow out. Come back to me when you have a good length and I can cut it all to the same length,” Thanatos said.

“Wait,” Zagreus blurted, voice tolling like the brass of a bell as it rang out into the silence. Thanatos only scarcely suppressed a flinch, having not expected such an outburst. “You mean you’ll do this for me again?”

“Well, it is obvious that you cannot be entrusted with the task yourself,” Thanatos replied. 

“I-” Zagreus started, abruptly cutting himself off. He stood on unsure legs, bare feet slapping against the marble and managing to knock a thickly knitted blanket down onto the floor from where it had been folded on the end of the bed. “I, uh - shit,  _ sorry _ . I-”

Zagreus seemed inclined to look at every oddity in the room except for at Thanatos; his gaze skittered easily from the blanket to the flecks of his cut hair, darting haphazardly around at the floor as if imploring it for some guidance. His face, when Thanatos looked, was stained dark with colour, rising along the bridge of his nose.

“Do I look good?” Zagreus asked, falteringly. Then, his eyes rounded, eyebrows clambering towards his hairline. “I mean, my hair, is it nice?”

“It is acceptable,” Thanatos replied, nervously. He made no effort to stop his expression from falling into a grim frown, his own brows raising inquisitively. He had never known their Prince to be so skittish. 

Zagreus had never been scared of him before. What about this most recent venture to the surface had caused this newfound fear to rise in him? 

A strange feeling bloomed in him then; swelling painfully like the bite of a dagger against his ribs, drawing painfully over his heart when he breathed. 

“Right, fantastic,” Zagreus nodded, gaze still firmly fixed at some vague point just beyond Thanatos’ head. The man gestured to the door, thick fingers folding together into fists as he made his way towards the exit. “Thanks, Than. I erm, I owe you.”

Then, without a further word, without bidding for his attention with some fool-hardy gesture, without even an invitation to join him, he was gone. 

Thanatos swallowed thickly, glancing from the vacant maw of the doorway, lit in golden light from the candles of the exterior, down at the scissors in his palm. He flexed his fingers, sore as they were slotted against the metal. He could still feel the phantom brush of that soft hair as it splayed between his fingers.

In his chest that painful feeling rose, drawing talons along his lungs until it hurt to even breathe.

It could only be the beckoning of a dying soul, he decided. He replaced the scissors on the desk, allowing a moment to pluck up the blanket and fold it on the bed (he knew that Dusa would struggle with that. A lack of hands did not make for a proficiency in folding, after all.)

He returned to the surface in a flash of green light, searing across his skin like the weight of an embrace. 

\---

“I do not believe that I ever caught your name.”

Winter had settled on the surface in a heavy flush of bridal bright snow layering across the sloping hills of the country. Trees bowed beneath sloughs of white, limbs spindly and crooked, bark grey like ash. No animal stirred, no birdsong caught up in the howling breeze. The only sound that found them was the tepid churning of the nearby river, valiant as the babbling waters refused to freeze solid across the surface. The edges were fringed with black ice, thick with mud, but the water moved too swiftly for the winter to fully seize it as it ran across the fields. Down amongst the outermost villages, where the river tapered off into thin, reedy little brooks, he knew that it would likely freeze fast; it probably already had.

The first frosts of winter always brought about so much death. 

Thanatos glanced up from his hands - cupped around a copper mug, filled with heady mulled wine, dark where it stained the rim - and caught the gaze of Ares. His brow was drawn down sharply, deep lines skittering away from the corners of his eyes. White flakes of snow were landing on his skin, melting into dew within mere seconds. 

“I do not believe that you ever asked for it,” he replied. 

Ares laughed, throwing his head back with the motion. He laughed always with his chest, a deep baritone rumble that would carry across the carnage of a battlefield. His face scrunched up with the mirth of it. Once Thanatos had believed him to be humouring him, some gawky God-child, who was only a marvel to toy with. 

But he had long since grown into his height; had filled out his muscles and had become fully a man, and Lord Ares still laughed at his wry remarks.

Perhaps he found him funny. 

“Did I not ask for it just now?” Ares asked.

They were beneath a canopy of a fig tree, sheltering under the broad curve of bowed branches. Ares had produced a glass bottle from deep within the confines of his satchel, had bribed Thanatos into idle chatter with the prospect of an offering befitting a God. 

They always did receive much better boons up on Olympus; and for as long as that persisted Ares could count on plying him with their fruity drinks. 

“In some vague, round-about way I suppose that you did.” Thanatos raised his mug, took a sip and savoured the acrid breaking of it over his tongue, the sweet lick that chased it down his throat, how it sparked a warmth in his gut. Snowflakes were catching on his skin, little speckles of the flurry that did not begin to melt. “I am Thanatos.”

“Delighted,” Ares said. “Lady Aphrodite has heard of you.”

Thanatos blinked, snapping his head up to meet Ares’ gaze, catching the flicker of entertainment in his eye, the wry smirk on his lips. “Pardon?” he asked.

“I imagine that your surprise is brought on by the fact that she knows of you, and not that you do not know of  _ her _ ,” Ares mused.

“I-,” Thanatos bit out, jaw working soundlessly in an attempt to form words. “Lady Aphrodite knows of me?” He repeated. 

“In a vague sense,” Ares confirmed. 

Some tender thing crowded his expression, a dark weight briefly vanishing from his eyes - were the conversation less intriguing Thanatos would scold him for simpering. “She has mentioned you, and your deeds up on Olympus. It seems that many of the partners of your quarry resent you for it, and have pleaded to her for their revenge.”

A spike of fear drove through his chest, churning up the wine that once settled comfortably in his gut into a sour nausea. Something hard lodged in his throat, impossible to swallow around no matter how discreetly he tried. Panic flared in his blood, thrumming against the delicate flesh of his wrist-

“Oh,” Ares smiled, waving a large hand between them. “Fear not,  _ Than _ -” he beamed the name, spoken between bared teeth, softened by a smile- “she has no intentions of honouring their pleas. It just took me by surprise, to find that my colleagues knew so much of you.” 

“I know a lot of them,” he said, awkwardly.

“I am certain that you do.” Ares nodded once, jaw setting as if deciding upon something. “You should come visit, the occasion would surely give Dionysus some purpose for once.”

Thanatos paused, considering the prospect as the fear of Aphrodite’s wrath abated in his gut. Just as the thought turned in his mind a new terror bore itself, rushing through his recently calmed bones with a jolt of abstract panic: Lord Hades would go  _ mad _ .

“I must refuse,” he said. 

“Suit yourself,” Ares shrugged, metal of his pauldrons shrieking as it rasped across the juncture of his armour. “Truly though, Thanatos, if you need some respite or simply want good company, Olympus will have you. And if you do not wish for Olympus, I suppose that I will tolerate you for a time.”

Thanatos, for the first time during their conversation, allowed his lips to twitch up into a smile. He sipped his wine, refreshing and Olympian. “Thank you.”


End file.
